Birthday Cake
Tina Martin
Birthday cake on a day it didn’t matter.
White buttercream frosting coating my stubby fingers.
The good china passed around, because my father insisted.
Back then we didn’t know it, but we were celebrating,
Not a birthday, or a report card, not even their anniversary.
My father’s 3-month period of lifeless fatigue, and harrowing depression had come to a halt.
My mother rejoiceful, fully aware that he would finally go back to work.
And me, naive, excited about the seven layers and tinted sprinkles.
I was too young to understand the politics of birthday cake.
It wasn’t just a cake, it was the beginning:
Of my father’s erratic behavior, delirious, often to the point of hysteria.
He hung up Christmas lights in June,
‘There’s no better time like the present’ is what he said,
As he climbed out my bedroom window onto the tiled roof.
He had no ladder, just a hammer, some nails, and a gleeful daughter handing him lights.
We went to Disneyland on a Saturday afternoon.
He drove like a maniac, dodging red lights, swerving past those Californian palm trees.
He drove 20 over the speed limit. It was a surprise he wasn’t pulled over,
And an even bigger one when why mother just sat by and said nothing.
But that was my father, he drove carelessly and lived like he was on borrowed time.
If we’re being honest, I liked him best like this.
Not when he was manic, when an outsider who didn’t know any better would deem him intoxicated.
But on the freeway, while we pretended to know the words to whatever was on the radio
When I handed him a string of colored lights, and he would point to the constellations–
The Big Dipper, the North Star. And then he would make up a few–
Sam Martin, he connected the dots and preserved himself in the stars.
In the cracks between his insanity was my father. I learned to look for it, to cherish it.
In the end he was right. All we had was borrowed time.
He died on a Thursday afternoon
My mother walked into our West Coast home
And screamed, the chocolate cake slipped from her grip
Because it was my birthday, and there would be no cake.
Tina Martin is a sophomore majoring in Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing. If she isn’t writing then she’s reading. If she isn’t reading, then she’s probably over caffeinated in a coffee shop. Tina has grown up in several different countries and houses over the years, but the frigid cold of New Jersey is what she calls home.